Tag: honesty

A few days ago, my mom and I sat across from each other in her living room, having a rare direct conversation about some big things going on in my life. The kids played around us; there might have been a kid’s show on t.v. At a natural pause in the conversation, I asked: “Is there anything else you want to talk about, while we’re being honest?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Sometimes your blog really worries me. Like I think you’re in a deep depression. And it sounds like you–” she lowered her voice. “Hate being a parent.”

I thought about it for a second. “I’m ok. But I do hate being a parent.”

It was hard for her to hear, and looking at those words now, and turning them over in my mind as I have been since our conversation, they do seem pretty ugly. And I wonder: if my mom thinks that, others probably do, too.

Honesty seems kind of rare in conversations about motherhood. Or, if we are being honest and talking about how it’s sometimes hard and thankless, it is always buffered by the “but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Being a stay at home mom to three little kids is fucking hard. I am constantly overwhelmed, overstimulated, overtired. Even as I’m typing this Aedan is telling me about some movie about whales even though I asked him to quietly watch Finding Dory while I write. I have been giving him my attention all morning. But it’s never enough. They are always hungry. As I clean up one mess, they are trashing the house behind me. I feel like I have little relief. Little support. Maybe that’s what I hate.

Yesterday, I bundled the kids up and we walked down the street I grew up on to visit an old friend and coworker of mine. She is a bright, shining soul. She is peace and light and love. She is a talented ventriloquist, artist and writer. She also has two grown sons, with jobs and passions and girlfriends, and her perspectives on parenting are always so refreshing for me. They bring me back down to earth, show me that there is life after this life. She reassures me, as my own mother does, that I’m doing a great job. But as a fellow creative person, she also is careful to remind me, every time we get together, how important my creative work is. How necessary it is to my own wellbeing, and to the wellbeing of my kids, and in the world. She always encourages me to make time, if I can, for my work.

As we talked, I felt the dark cloud lifting a little. As she told me about spending time with her kids, now adults, sharing things they love, I saw glimpses of a time when my grown children, with their own independant lives, would visit me. How they might one day celebrate the creative work I did and continue to do. These years are a slog, absolutely. And I am, at best, ambivalent to them. I love my kids to the point of heartbreak. I inhale the scent of Colm’s scalp as often as I can, and I notice that I no longer have the opportunity to do that with Aedan. And when Charlotte nurses a million times a day, though I am irritated by it, weary of it after almost 6 years, I watch her pat my breast as she does it and I know there will be a day soon when they’re mine again. But the only way to those distant horizons is through all of this.

I’m realizing that I might be a better parent not just with a “little relief,” a yoga class or a mindful cup of tea sprinkled throughout the week like favours. I think I would be a better parent if I worked outside of the home. After Aedan was born and my year of mat leave was up, I thought “why would I go back to bartending? It’s not like I have an important ‘career.'”

How wrong I was. How I underestimated the sense of independance and freedom and agency my service job gave me. I can’t rewind and change my years as a stay at home mom, but I can rewrite the script going forward.

We leave for Dawson tomorrow morning. When we get back, I’ll be picking up another shift in the bar. And I’m going to find childcare for two mornings a week. And I’m going to take a private office space for myself, and I am going to sit in my office space two mornings a week, and maybe for an hour before each of my two bar shifts, and I am going to write. I am going to put words on paper like my life depends on it, I am going to “write like a motherfucker” as Cheryl Strayed puts it, and I’m going to see where it takes me.

And for my readers who are also struggling with these early years of parenting: it’s okay that it’s really hard. It’s okay that you don’t like it all the time. You don’t have to. We are doing this thing in a bubble, and we’re not meant to do this thing in a bubble. The system is rigged, and not in our favour. So be kind to yourselves, and ask for help as often as you can.